How to Incorporate Speed and Agility Work into Youth Football Training

Every player could improve their speed and/or agility to some degree, as a player I was built more for endurance than speed so I definitely needed help!

It’s because of this lack of personal speed that I make sure to try and include SAQ elements in sessions that will benefit even the quickest of players; so I thought I would share some of the ideas I use and throw the question out to you to share your favourite or key ingredients for building speed and agility.

First up for me is the warm up PLUS injury prevention exercises.??If we are going to be working on speed, we are working at 100% intensity.??If we are working on agility then we need to be able to change direction in an instant and that required robustness.??Those two things mean that I always inform the players in advance of the intense nature of the speed work and get them mentally prepared to work at 100% which then often leads to a more focused and thorough warm up.??I won’t pretend to you that every player does a complete and focused warm up every session, I wish they did.

The injury prevention exercises I used start off with very basic - hopping on one foot forwards over a line or cone, sticking the landing (no wobble or bounce) before hopping backwards and sticking the landing again.??Do this 10 times on each foot before repeating a second set which has one big difference.??As soon as you foot touches the ground going forwards or backwards, you push off and go the other direction as fast as you can.??The first set, the controlled set, is stability, strength and balance.??I tell players that the more controlled you perform these actions, the better.??The second set, the fast set, is for speed and agility.

That’s level 1 of the I.P. exercises I do and I’ve found it helpful with adolescents, especially young girls.??Have a look into the rate of knee injuries in males vs females if you need any convincing on how beneficial (necessary) I.P. exercises are for players.

Being mentally ready to work at 100% and knowing that you have prepped your body in the run up to speed and agility work (no pun intended) is a crucial start for me.

The second part of building speed and agility is looking at?what?you do.??Is it developing acceleration, top speed, deceleration, change of direction???A study I read a few years ago concluded that 30 metres, 3 x per week over a 1 month period was enough to see improvement.??I do need to note that this was based on professional players training on pitch and in the gym however, I have used that model (speed work 3 times a week in varying forms with 1 session including I.P. exercises) for a good few years and it seems to work. This may be coincidental with developing bodies and players would get faster anyway but, I’m here to coach and I included it. (An approach to how I used off-season training during my playing days and how I improved can be found in my last article -?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/blueprint-off-season-player-training-unlocking-your-potential-steel?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via)

One big issue I have with the agility work I see is that there is no reaction in the exercise at times. Agility within a football context is often predicated by the movement of the ball or an opponent or teammate so, let’s include movement based of a stimulus in the sessions.??This can be as simple as having a player run towards you and calling a direction or colour or a hand signal or passing a ball for the player to catch that changes their direction.??There are many, many ways of including a ‘stimulus’ into sessions but the easiest and most fun I have seen players have when working on speed and agility is by playing a game of tag.??Whatever variety, with or without a ball, players have fun and it works so many facets of speed and agility.??This, along with team or individual races can help bring out the competitor in players and get them working towards the higher end of their speed.??If I remember correctly, acceleration when chasing a football against an opponent was found to be higher than without a football - nice to know if you are training footballers!?

The final thing I want to speak about now is?decelerations.??It wasn’t until I work with Danny Deigan (currently with ISL Champions Mumbai City) at Western Sydney Wanderers W-League team that I started to learn about decelerations - think the exact opposite of acceleration and you’ve got it.??How important they are is something I think is often missed by coaches and I honestly can’t remember it being mentioned in any of my coaching courses with great detail.??By able to slow down and/or stop as quickly as possible whilst keeping the body under control can be a huge advantage to a player.??If we want players to lift more weight in the gym, accelerate and sprint faster on the pitch, we must make sure they can slow that force down and control it in order to change direction effectively.

There has been a recent spate of knee injuries within the English Women’s Super League and one theory suggested by a coach was that players are moving faster than they every have but are unable and untrained at stopping that speed.??I’m in no position to argue for or against that point but I do see sense in asking players to improve acceleration and deceleration in equal measure.??The first ever S&C coach I had told me, “If you’re working abs, don’t forget your back, if you’re working quads, don’t forget your hamstrings.”??An easy reminder of ‘work both sides of the equation.’

So how can this be done in a training session???I normally start off with a straight line of 4 cones: sprint forward to the third cone from the first, go backwards to the second cone and then forwards to the fourth cone.??Easy enough and work deceleration when moving forwards and backwards.??I progress this to include angles such as running forwards and then backwards at 45o before moving forwards again and also include lateral movements but; these are done over time.??SAQ work, from my understanding, is more of a marathon than a sprint..I did mean that one! ??

And that’s it, my list for incorporating speed and agility work into youth training sessions is making sure players are physically and mental ready to work at 100% with a good warm up, Including Injury Prevention exercises once a week, making sure players are pushed to 100% speed a few times a week, adding in uncertainty with reaction exercises and making sure players can slow their bodies down with control.

I hope you can take something from this list and I would love to hear what you think is crucial for speed and agility development or what exercises you do.

1. Warm Up
2. Injury Prevention?
3. Frequency
4. Reaction
5. Deceleration